Don't Fear Asking Your Doctor for a Convincing Physician's Statement

We have a real problem with Physician's Statements from doctors who are too busy to spend time writing them and unwilling to go out on a limb to say it like it really is. So you have to work around this.

When it comes to doctors, you have to figure out how to get them to sign off on a Physician's Statement that is crafted with them. A doctor has 20 minutes for you, and you need more time than that. So you need to convince them that it is in everyone's best interest for your lawyer to assist them in writing a statement that explains your symptoms, relates them to medical evidence, and persuasively argues that your condition prevents you from performing a critical element of your job.

Just like visiting a doctor with a list of your symptoms, it is important that you go to your doctor with a list of what needs to be in the physician's statement.

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We have a real problem with Physician’s Statements from doctors who are too busy to spend time writing them and unwilling to go out on a limb to say it like it really is. So you have to work around this.
When it comes to doctors, you have to…
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Following up on my earlier post about getting fired for misconduct:
If you are fired for misconduct, that does not mean your agency can wash its hands of you and not cooperate with your claim for Disability Retirement. Your agency is still required…
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ANSWER: Assuming that you are disabled at the time, your annuity will start from either (1) the day after your government pay ceased; or (2) the day after you were separated from government service. If your government pay ceases and then starts up again, the resumption will cut off your right to collect disability retirement for the period during which your pay had ceased. Therefore, make sure that once your pay has ceased for any considerable time, that you do not receive any further pay from your government job before finally being separated.

Example: Peter, a government employee, applied for disability retirement and went on LWOP status for nearly a year, pending approval of his application. At his boss' urging he returned to his government job part-time for two weeks. After he won disability retirement, OPM refused to pay him his annuity for the nearly one year he had been out of work. By going back to work for the government, Peter forfeited his retroactive disability annuity for the nearly one year period. He would have been awarded the annuity for that period if he had not worked those two weeks for the government or if he had worked for a non-government employer instead.

How valuable is the reconsideration stage in winning disability retirement?

ANSWER: Until recently, the reconsideration stage was often a wasted effort. In most instances as a consequence of bureaucratic intransigence (or plain laziness), OPM regularly failed to provide the reasons why the application was rejected. This pretty much made the reconsideration stage worthless, since you had to guess at what might change the minds of those at OPM. After constantly pummeling OPM for this failure, I have found that the agency has changed its procedure, and is now regularly providing reasons for their initial denial. This makes an enormous difference and allows you to make a more meaningful response on reconsideration.

If OPM rejects your application again on reconsideration, it issues a final decision, which gives you a right to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. There, an administrative judge will afford you a hearing and decide your entitlement to disability retirement.

How do I get the government to award me retirement if I can't prove that I have disabling symptoms?

ANSWER: The law has accommodated the imprecision of medical science by providing alternative methods of proof. Deficiencies in either attendance, performance, or conduct may be used to infer the presence of disabling symptoms. To that end, the "Applicant's Statement" and the "Supervisor's Statement" specifically raise questions about such deficiencies.

However, just because you demonstrate such deficiencies, it does not mean that OPM will use them in your favor to infer that you have a disabling medical condition. Quite the contrary, OPM often, and without good reason, uses evidence of such deficiencies to trash employees for laziness and ineptness, thereby defeating the purpose for which they raised the deficiencies in the first instance.

Apart from the inferences provided by various deficiencies, the law has developed a special presumption concerning the credibility of government employees with long tenure and a good record. The bottom line is that you have a right to be believed even if your symptoms can't be perceived by others. Especially if you have long tenure and a good record, you are entitled to be taken seriously in your claims of disabling symptoms. If your claims are consistent with the nature of your medical condition, you are entitled to disability retirement.

About the Lawyer

I have represented Federal government employees and Postal workers seeking OPM Disability Retirement for a long time. I also represent them in agency leave problems such as AWOL, FMLA, LWOP, etc. Leave problems often come along with being sick and disabled. I have stuck to this area of the law for more than 30 years of the 50 years I have been a lawyer.